Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The Triumph of the Political Right in California's Gubernatorial Primary

The
political right had a good night in California’s gubernatorial race.The top two candidates who will advance to
the November ballot represent a right-wing political consensus that has been
steadily emerging in the state to the detriment of working-class Californians

On
the one hand, there is Neel Kashkari, who won fame for carrying water for Wall
Street and overseeing the bank bailout, during which he lied to oversight
committees like that headed by Elizabeth Warren about the extent of the
bailout.Kashkari’s gubernatorial bid is
big on pictures of the candidate gamboling in the surf with his dogs, and
correspondingly light on policy.

But
like his equally right-wing opponent Jerry Brown, Kashkari signs up to the view
that Californians have to limp along without tapping into the great wealth that
exists in the state and is currently distributed in such an unequal fashion.(Brown currently has 55.2% of the vote,
Kashkari 17.9%, and Tim Donnelly, the other Republican candidate, 14.7%.Results
of other races are also available here.)

Although
he is officially a Republican and Jerry Brown is a Democrat on paper, Kashkari
will have a hard time against our gimlet-eyed governor who proclaimed
that “fiscal prudence” was the big winner in the primary election.It was Brown, after all, who launched such
vicious cuts to services for the poor, the elderly, the weak, and the young
that even California’s electorate blanched at the social wreckage he was making
of the state, and opted to pass the cosmetic Proposition 30, which promised a “solution”
but instead opened the door to the terribly irresponsible practice of “ballot-box
budgeting”.

It
is Brown who equated more funding for students in public higher education with
a bank bailout, and who airily dismisses pre-Kindergarten education as a
luxury.It is Brown who threatened to
veto efforts by Democrats to restore funding to beleaguered social services,
and Brown who is urging the unregulated fracking of our landscape at the same
time that he pillages our social terrain.

Against
this kind of right-wing fundamentalism—in which a balanced budget
(traditionally a tool rather than an end in and of itself) is seen as being
more valuable than the health and welfare of the people who comprise our
society—Kashkari will struggle to make headway.

The
real tragedy is that in the context of our new top-two primary system—which has
seen record political spending in a primary election—there will only be these
two right-wing candidates on the ballot in November.

People
laugh at the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party, claiming that they
have no place in a ‘serious’ electoral contest.But those parties offered detailed agendas for the social and economic
transformation of our state.Jerry Brown
offered homilies about “fiscal responsibility”, which means his right to beat
up on people who can’t vote (largely our state’s children) in order to balance
the budget.And Neel Kashkari offered
policy agendas that could fit on business cards, and which promised sunshine
and unicorns without ever getting to the “how”.So who are the “serious” candidates?

This
means that we will not have a conversation about the quarter of California’s
children who live in poverty while powerful corporations demand the right to
trample on the powerless.Many of these
children lack adequate housing and nutrition, to say nothing of the
opportunities that should be the mainstay of a caring society.

We
will not have a conversation about the privatization of our higher education
system, such that today students are charged astronomical sums for what their
parents had for free or close to nothing.We will not discuss the fact that because of the privatization of higher
education, student loan debt is just behind housing debt nationwide, meaning
that a generation of Californians will enter the workforce already maimed and
crippled by financial burdens imposed by a selfish community and cynical
politicians.

We
will not discuss the underclass that is developing in the Central Valley where
people die or suffer terribly from exposure to poisons in the air, food, and
water, and where quality of life is as bad as anywhere in the country.

We
will not discuss our yawning democratic deficit, and the broken political
structure which, when combined with the fundamentalist economics which drive
Brown and Kashkari, create an ungovernable polity in which we act out what
Brown described as a “war of all against all”, a violent scramble for scarce
resources.

The
election in November will devolve into a series of cheap talking points and
not-so-cheap ads run by two candidates who essentially agree upon creating a
leaner, meaner, more heartless and less responsible California.

My
own work will take me out of the state and leave me unable to vote in what
would ordinarily be a critical election.But the “choice” between a deeply unserious financier and a deeply
cynical old man is an awful one, which will ultimately mean little to those
Californians who are suffering as a result of our scorched-earth politics or to
those who are disturbed by this turn of events.

1 comment:

While I can't agree with the false right-wing equivalency presented here, I heartily endorse the use of gamboling in a blog post. Also the description of Jerry Brown as 'gimlet-eyed'...though isn't that usually a compliment "a piercing or watchful eye," and I'm pretty sure you never compliment Jerry Brown...unless you were making some sort of reference to the drink and that his eyes are somehow filled with vodka and lime juice?

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.